


where we went

by speedboat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:56:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once in the car, Kent does three things: he googles "valium+vodka"; he shakes Jack awake; and he takes a napkin and wipes the tears away from Jack's face.</p><p>or: Parse was the one who found Jack during his overdose.</p><p>or: In Defense of Kent Parson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where we went

**Author's Note:**

> please note that i have not read Huddle! and therefore have no idea if this contradicts literally everything written/drawn there.

 

i.

Kent's mom calls to tell him his dad is going to be out of town until the 27th, and that the custody lawyer said he and his sister are only held to an overnight on the 28th at his dad's house. 

It's a pretty good schedule, all told, and Kent packs for Buffalo on December 23 with enthusiasm he hasn't had since before his parents' divorce. He sits impishly on top of his suitcase in his billet room as Jack zips it shut, arguing that WASP Christmas is superior to French-Canadian Christmas and making out with him in equal intervals. 

"And gran makes lemon pie, and we play the dice game, and the one with the most presents starts charades."

"That's three things," Jack says plaintively. "We said point-by-point."

"I guess," Kent shrugs. "I'll make it up to you." He leans forward and teases Jack's lips open with his tongue. 

Jack's responsive, more relaxed than Kent's ever seen him unmedicated, happy and soft in the yellow light of Kent's billet room. He kneels on the floor next to the suitcase on which Kent is perched, and slowly, Kent leans over and scoots into Jack's lap. 

He's testing the waters, of course; Jack, as a generally anxious person, has never made a move in the short history of their relationship, and while Kent is mostly fine with waiting for Jack's nonverbal cues that he wants to progress to the next level, he's also a red-blooded male, and he's pretty sure that lap sitting/nonchalant grinding isn't going to send Jack into gay panic.

Snow falls outside the window, orange under the lights of Winnipeg, the heat kicking into overdrive in the house. His billet parents are Christmas shopping, having conceded a while ago to basically having a second billet player in Jack Zimmermann, and Kent thinks, _fuck it._ He breaks away from Jack. A long string of someone's saliva stretches, then breaks between them.

"Kent?" Jack's voice is deep and strung-out. "Is something wrong?"

Jack's been hitting his pills really hard these last few weeks, the stress of a roadie and the mounting draft combining. He's just a little off when he's on them, like he's a beat behind, and Kent tries to act like it doesn't worry him. It's just… it's a lot of pills.

"Are you sober?" he asks, looking deep into Jack's blue, blue eyes. "It's fine if you're not," he hurries to add on, hoping not to sound like a hovering girlfriend. 

"I am," Jack says, and Kent tries to hide his smile. It lights him up a little, that Jack doesn't need the pills around him. "Is something wrong?" Jack asks again, thumbing the spit away from Kent's chin. 

Literally nothing is wrong. Kent barely has to spend any time with his dad this Christmas, it's snowing, Jack's making out with him sober, and there's barely four layers of fabric between their hard-ons. This is the good life. 

"I like you," he tells Jack, running a hand up his arm to rest on fhis shoulder. 

"Okay?" Jack says suspiciously. "Good?"

"It is," Kent says. Then, a beat later, he says, "Do you want to fuck me?"

"Huh?"

"Do you want to fuck me?" Kent repeats. "You, me. Your dick, my ass," he says to Jack's blank look. He makes a lewd gesture for emphasis.

Jack squints at him. "Why?"

Kent stares. "It's fun? It feels good? We're both hot?"

"Why do you want me to," Jack clears his throat. "you?"

"'Cause I…" Kent trails off, looking down, embarrassed. "Literally why are you questioning this?"

Jack stares back, eyes wide. They're only a few inches apart, and Kent scoots back onto his suitcase, perturbed and ashamed at the same time. 

"It just seems kind of…" Jack shakes his head. "I dunno."

"Gay," Kent finishes, an angry pit forming in his stomach. He struggles to keep his voice steady. "It seems a little gay to you, Zimms?"

"Yeah," Jack says, sounding relieved he understands. "I dunno, I just don't want to." 

"Sure. Whatever. I was just messing around," Kent says, hating every atom of himself. He turns to his suitcase and shoves the box of condoms and lube he'd bought underneath a layer of clothes. 

"Thanks for the help, Jack." His voice seems detached, and he wishes he could make himself sound normal and cool and nonchalant about whatever the fuck that was. 

"Yeah," Jack says. "Any time. Do you wanna?" he scoots closer, grabs Kent's hand, and motions for Kent to climb back on his lap.

Kent sends every nonverbal signal he can to say "get away." Jack doesn't catch the hint, and he wraps an arm around Kent's stiff shoulders from behind, nudging his chin into the crevice of his shoulder. Kent shakes him off, ashamed and angry at the same time. "That seem a little gay to you, Jack?" he asks. "Your dick in my asscrack?"

"Kent, I—" Jack steps back, his voice small. "Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not—" He stops. "Can you just give me some space? God."

"Kent, I don't know what I did to—"

Kent stands up and turns his back to Jack. 

"You're not my boyfriend, Jack, so can you stop being so fucking clingy?"

He sneaks a glance at Jack, who's flushed a bright pink. Jack looks uncertainly back at him, like some bullied fat kid on the playground in elementary school. Jesus fuck.

Anyone else would call Kent out for being a little bitch, a _gay_ little bitch to boot, getting mad over his best friend passing on fucking him. But Jack just kind of kneels there, looking too big and too small at the same time. Kent wishes he'd grow some hair on his balls and tell him he's being an asshole, hit him, anything. He's just _taking_ it. It incenses him.

"Just get out, Zimmermann," Kent says, which is probably the best thing to do. He knows from experience that he's just going to get meaner, and it'd probably be in both of their best interests, at least as line mates, to have a relationship left to salvage after break. 

"Kent?" Jack's voice is a little frantic. His mind is probably telling him Kent hates him, that no one will want to be his friend, and the wave of shame that crashes over Kent is probably the worst feeling he's ever had. "Do you really want me to—?"

"Yes," Kent says firmly, because he needs to shower and try to forget everything that just happened.

"Have a—" Jack sniffs as he leaves the room. "A nice break, Parse."

Kent slumps to the ground as he hears the front door close behind Jack.

 

ii.

Jack takes five anti-anxiety pills on the plane home. Two loosens the knot in his middle back from clenching his shoulders together. Three takes away the pit in his stomach, and tells him that Parse probably doesn't hate him. Four makes him kind of forget who Kent Parson even is. And five… well, he likes steady increments. Sue him.

He's on cloud nine, he thinks, and he laughs, because he's above the clouds in the plane. "I'm above cloud nine," he says to the stewardess, who smiles, and Jack smiles too until her face kind of develops Parse's green eyes. 

Her smile turns that steely, mean one Parse makes, right before he says something that crosses too close to the line and Jack has to act like it's funny. "You're not funny," he says, and her face turns back to her regular face, and she looks confused. "Sorry," he says after that, because for all he knows she's a stand-up comedian at night.

He worries (as much as five Valium let him worry) that his mom will pick him up and figure out he's taken too much medication. She knows his tells pretty well, and she's seen him drunk that one time after his dad's last Stanley Cup, when he was twelve and his dad let him have a beer. Lucky for him, it's his dad, who, in the most supportive way possible, knows nothing about him, that picks him up. He has some time to sober up, and even though he has a headache, his mom is busy making dinner for their party tonight when he gets home, and she barely even registers him. He goes upstairs and changes.

About fifteen minutes before dinner, he crashes down from the high, so fast he doesn't even feel it coming. He can hear the guests milling around downstairs, asking, _where's Jack? What's Jack up to?_ One minute he's thinking fondly about Jonathan Toews' ass, the next he's got a huge headache and realizing that thinking about another guy's ass, even a well-shaped one, is gay, like, _super_ gay. And super gay leads him to thinking about how he fucked things up with Parse.

"Jack?" His father knocks gently on his door, and sticks his head in. "Some of the younger people showed up." 

The heavy-breathing, heart-thumping pain he's used to, but he's never had a panic attack while coming down from a high before, and he doesn't actually want to die, so he can't take more. He pulls on a t-shirt and jeans, and splashes some water on his face before heading downstairs to the party.

He's underdressed, he realizes the moment he gets downstairs. People he barely know say hi to him, swirling around him in cocktail attire. Looking down at his grubby t-shirt, he feels a flush rise to his face, and he turns to change when he's swept in by his dad, to a conversation involving Mario and his son. 

His dad is saying something about Jack's point streak, not as long as Parson's or some shit, and Jack schools his face into something like a smile, asking Lemieux's kid about his season, and not really listening to him. His mind is stuck on the snub about Parse, and he keeps mulling it over as his headache gets worse, wondering if his dad would rather have Parse as a kid, if Parse is going to go first, if his dad would rather have Parse as a kid even if he doesn't go first. He wanders off after a minute, probably in the middle of one of Mario's stories, which makes him feel shitty but not enough to go back and finish it.

He's whisked over to Aunt Emilie, who introduces him to this girl Madison like she's doing the Lord's work. She keeps winking at them and nudging him. Madison looks vaguely interested, and he almost feels bad when he sidesteps her for the bar in the kitchen the minute his aunt's left. He downs two fingers, and the effect is instant and blurring; he feels substantially more adequate with everyone spinning around him. This is probably the Valium, he realizes, because whiskey has never been this immediate on its own. He feels like maybe he can forget, just for a second.

He's an expert at pretending everything is okay from far away, programming his phone to remind him when to send said happy emails, working an imaginary girl who's "in his Calc class" into his conversations with his mom, and smiling wide when he Skypes his family so they can't see the dark circles under his eyes. He feels his throat doing the thing where it closes up, and he just can't go down there. He just can't. 

His mom calls him over, and he doesn't know what to do, so he turns the other way and stumbles upstairs. He's already sweaty and sick-looking, and could probably vomit if he needed to. He tells her he ate the airplane food when she comes up to check on him. He works through a panic attack _au naturel_ , because he doesn't actually want to overdose, and then round two, and round three, and at one in the morning, he thinks he's probably good to take his regular dosage. 

He takes out his phone to text Parse, in the calm comfort zone of a regular dose, and remembers, dully, that Parse had asked him to go. Christ, the way he'd looked at him. It was like everything Jack felt for himself, but broadcast onto someone else's face. 

 

 

iii.

Kent plays the pronoun game all night, as the WASPs ask him if he's dating, who he wants to date. Et cetera. The lemon pie is as good as he expected, and he gets the second most presents during the dice game. He catches up with his cousins, Gran, and his aunts and uncles, explaining the billet process an estimated thirteen times throughout the night. It feels good, to be Kent Parson: nice, successful young man, instead of Kent Parson: boy who made his friend cry two days before Christmas.

His sister, Audrey, has developed a smart mouth while he's been away.

"Kent, you should fix your hair," she tells him, raising her eyebrows judgmentally as they're playing charades. "And shave. You're not fooling anybody; that's not a beard."

"Audrey, you should fix your face," he says, and she rolls her eyes as snottily as possible. He does the routine his dad used to do when they were little, where he pretends his eyes are stuck at the top of his eyeroll. He goes the extra mile, too, pretending to twist an eye in its socket and acting like it came free.

"You're never going to get a girlfriend like that," she says, and he almost slips and is like, _joke's on you, I don't want one._ Instead, he takes a deep breath and asks her to fix his hair for him. 

"It's too greasy. I don't want to touch it."

She's kind of a twat right now. 

He says as much to his mom as they're cleaning up; she hits him over the head with a spoon.

"You were a twat too at that age, little asshole."

He missed his mom, he realizes, with genuine surprise. It isn't that he considers himself a total Grinch. Like, he knew he loved her, but being back in this kitchen, doing something this simple, is such a good feeling and he turns around and manhandles her into a hug, resting his chin gently on the top of her head.

"Kent, honey, are you concussed?" she asks, deadpan.

"No," he says. "I'm okay, I guess. I just missed you."

"Do you want, like, money? Is that what this is?" she asks, still kind of joking around.

He feels naked with her looking up at him. He lets go to sit down at the table in the kitchen where they eat when there isn't company. "I'm so screwed up."

"Whoa, tiger," she says, brows knitting. She crosses her arms. "What do you mean, you're screwed up?"

"I," he blows a breath out. "Jack, you know, he has, um, anxiety. He has these panic attacks." He looks up at her.

"Okay." She squats down so they're at eye level. 

"And I was mad at him, and I said something that wasn't very nice. And he got very… anxious. And then I told him to get out of my room. And he did."

"Define not-nice," she says. 

He searches the wall behind her head, trying to think of an equivalent wrongdoing that doesn't involve coming out to her on Christmas night. 

"I don't know. He didn't want to do something I wanted to do. I got all pissy, you know how I do." 

His mom nods, the wheels probably turning in her master's-degree-in-psychology brain.

 "And he was, like, checking to make sure I wasn't really mad at him. Because that's what people with anxiety sometimes think, you know, that you're really mad when you're just kind of cranky."

(He'd googled it, once, after Greg Devlin had pointed out how often Jack asked if someone was mad at him.)

"Okay," his mom says, the _go on_ implied.

"And I didn't," his voice breaks, days of guilt wearing him down. "I kicked him out of my room without any kind of reassurance."

"Okay. That's not—"

"He's been so on-edge, y'know, draft in May and all that sh—stuff. And I knew what I should have done and I didn't do that. I did the opposite of what I should have done," he gets a little hysterical at the end.

"Kent," his mom says firmly. "You didn't do the wrong thing. You can't be everything for Jack, hard as it is. Look at me."

He does, feeling like a little kid again.

"You're not responsible for Jack Zimmerman's emotional wellbeing all the time. Text him and tell him you're not mad. Then enjoy your break, kiddo."

 

iv.

Jack is tasked with cleaning out the front entryway with his dad on December 28. They'll talk shop, his dad says, making Jack's skin crawl. 

They're having a hard time with line 3, especially, a bunch of charismatic players who just can't seem to click. Not everybody can be the star of the show all the time, everyone has said to them and they just don't get it. Bad Bob's experienced similar stuff, and he gives some good advice about the formations that'd worked back then. 

He explains the plays he and Parse and some of the other seniors have come up with, drawing on the snowy front porch when he can't describe it. His dad frowns at some, pointing out weaknesses in their formation or holes where the D-men could be used stronger. 

There are other plays that he says are league-level, and Jack glows internally when over half of the decent ones are his.

He laughs at the story Jack tells about a made-up play where the D-men start doing the Harlem Shake, with everyone else joining in while Parse assisted Jack in the goal. Jack had suggested it, completely deadpan, to their coach, while Parse and Dagger hid their giggles behind him, as their senior prank. 

They finally get the entry swabbed out and redecorated, and Bad Bob turns to him on the porch. 

"Some good plays you got there," he says. "Parson, too." Jack smiles hesitantly through the burning at the back of his throat. "You're gonna make some team happy in a few months, huh?"

Jack nods, swallowing around the lump.

His father puts an arm around his shoulders, staring out at the setting sun from the front porch. "I'm so proud of you, kid," he says, oblivious to Jack's shallow breath. "You're gonna be better than I ever could've hoped to be, you and Parson both. And you're doing so well with your… stuff." He waves an all-encompassing hand around Jack's anxiety. "Makes an old man pretty proud, y'know that?"

"Thanks," Jack says quietly. 

"I love you, kiddo," Bad Bob presses a kiss to the top of his head, exuberant, like a celly. 

"I love you too," Jack whispers, staring out at the sunset before them.

He declines supper as he heads down the stairs, three of the six pills still stuck in his throat. 

"I'm actually going to a party," he says to his mother as the front door swings shut.

  
v.

Audrey whispers to him that the house looks like a spaceship, and Kent decides within ten seconds in his dad's new house that she's right. He asks for a water, and he honest-to-god presses a button and the fridge rises up from the floor. 

"We're the bourgeoisie," Audrey mutters, and Kent laughs. 

Dinner is made by a private chef that his dad had wanted to try. It does sound dumb, a private chef, but Kent can't argue against the fried crab mac-and-cheese bites that are the first course. He'd thought the menu would be something like avocado foam with a single leaf of a Hungarian apple tree as garnish. He appreciates that his dad is trying. His father is a vice president in some unseen department of Best Buy, which probably got him the big bucks to buy this house. Kent usually tries not to think about why his dad constantly upgrades, if he's trying to impress them or win them back from his mom. 

His phone goes off during dessert, and he recognizes the ringtone immediately; it's Jack's voice, saying "Parse. Parse. Parse," over and over in this weird voice they'd made up last year. He fishes it out of his pocket, blushing, and makes a hurried excuse to his dad. He waves a hand at him, _just go already_ , and he rushes into the hall, sliding down the wall to answer it in a crouched position.

It's really loud, wherever Jack is. He covers his other ear and listens intently.

"Jack?"

There's static, for a long beat, the sound of someone rooting around to find a phone, and then Jack's voice says, "Kenny?"

Jack only calls him Kenny when he's drunk, and he prepares himself to hang up, when Jack makes this pained sound that seems to echo wherever he is, and the floor drops out from under Kent.

"Jack? Are you hurt?"

"'M'not… my tummy…" he doesn't speak for several beats. "I'm sorry, Parse, whatever I did."

Fucking hell. Jack Zimmermann is crying in public; he just used the word _tummy._

"What's wrong with your stomach, Jack?"

"Hurts. I'm sad."

"Is it like a pukey hurt?" Kent probes. "Do you think you're gonna throw up?"

" _Burns_."

"It burns?"

"Yeah. Had, like, six Valium. 'N vodka, I think."

"Jack, where the _fuck_ are you?"

"At Hammer's."

"You're at Chad Harding's house?"

Jack makes an acquiescing noise through a whimper.

"Can you give the phone to maybe somebody else?" Kent asks, as patient as he can be, concern burning in his throat.

There's a clatter, and somebody yells, "Hello?"

"What's the street address?" Kent asks.

"Uh…" there's a pause as the guy asks some of his buddies. "112 LeClarendon."

"Thank you," Kent says.

"Your friend's not doing so hot," the voice says. "Sniveling and puking."

Kent's heart clenches protectively as he hears that. He hates the idea of Jack panicking in a strange house, hates the idea of strangers seeing Jack cry, when a sober Zimms would die before he let strangers see him weak like that. He hates it a little more because he's probably partly to blame for it.

"Can you give his phone back to him?"

There's yet another commotion, and Kent can hear Jack's quiet, drunken sobs. He sounds miserable and sad, and guilt overtakes any common sense he has left.

"Zimms?"

"Yeah?"

"Hang tight, kay? I'll be there soon."

He pops his head back in the dining room and tells his Dad a PG-13 version of the story: that his friend Chad Harding was having a party, and he knows it's his father's night with them, and that he'll totally come back tomorrow. His dad gives in with some needling, and he smiles weakly through the worry. He'll take his car and be back by 2, sober, they agree, even as Kent realizes he's going to have to break curfew to help Jack sleep it off so he doesn't choke on his vomit. Whatever. He's off in ten minutes, passport in hand, to Toronto.

Jack is in the bathroom, as Kent guessed from the earlier acoustics, and is too drunk to stand. His knees buckle when Kent tries to get him up.

"Zimmy, c'mon, can you take a little weight?"

There's no answer. Kent shakes him. He's passed out.

"Fuck you," he mutters. 

The music is ridiculously loud, coursing through the house. It's dark save for some bullshit fucking lava lamps, and Kent has to find someone to help him carry Jack. He peeks in the kitchen, where there are actual lights, but everyone in there is too far gone to help him. The halls are mostly empty, and Kent loves himself too much to look in the bedrooms, which leaves one last resort: the walls in the living room, where the mellowed-out designated drivers hang out, laughing at their stupid friends. Sure enough, he sees Billy Merth, now in college, but a former captain of the Juniors.

"Merthy," he says, and he sounds desperate even to his own ears. "You gotta help me."

Merthy gives him an appraising look. "Parse, good to see you."

"Merthy, please help me."

"What are you—"

"Zimms is—" Kent runs a hand through his hair, suddenly irrationally upset. "Totally fucked up. Can you help me carry him?"

"Sure," Merthy says easily. Kent leads him to the bathroom. One arm at a time, they lift him from the floor of Hammer's bathroom, carry him out into the hall.

Merthy bumps Jack's head against the doorframe, and Kent snaps, "Careful!" before he can stop himself.

Merthy shoots Kent a knowing look. "You got it, loverboy."

They eventually relay him into the car, taking breaks as needed. Kent stole a bowl from the kitchen before he left; he props Jack up in the front seat and puts it in his lap. 

"Thank you," he gasps at Merthy. "Thank you, I needed you. Thank you."

"Yeahhhh," Merthy drags it out. "Take your boy home."

Once in the car, Kent does three things: he googles "valium+vodka"; he shakes Jack awake; and he takes a napkin and wipes the tears away from Jack's face. 

"Whazza?" Jack says.

"Wake up, fucktard," Kent says, and immediately regrets it as Zimms' face crumples again.

"Kennn," Jack says. "'M sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry, babe. I'm sorry."

The result from "Valium+vodka" is inconclusive. Jack starts to retch as Kent scrolls down.Kent, unperturbed, raps on the bowl twice, and Jack throws up into it. 

"Good job, Jack," Kent says absently. He glances over, and sees something red in the vomit. "Zimms, what the hell have you been eating?"

"Nothin."

"Nothin-Cheetos or Nothin-nothin?"

"Secan one."

Kent stares at him. "You haven't eaten anything today?"

"No."

Kent hits him on the shoulder hard, googling "red vomit" and scrolling past the specialty porn to WebMD, a bad feeling in his stomach. 

"Jack," he croaks as his suspicions are confirmed. He starts the car and reaching across Jack and the bowl of vomit to fasten Jack's seatbelt. "Jack, you fucking idiot, you're puking blood."

"I'm what?"

"Nothing. Hang tight."

The ride to the hospital is the worst drive of Kent's life; Jack pukes once more and it's the same red shit. Kent is so scared it's propelling him into overdrive. He uses the GPS but he swears at it whenever there's a light, _don't you know I'm driving to a fucking hospital, Siri, you useless fuckwit._

Jack thinks he's talking to him and begins to cry halfway through; Kent breaks down himself a few blocks from the hospital. They get there, finally, thank god. Jack's still awake, and Kent pulls him over his shoulder, bowl of his vomit in hand. 

"C'mon, baby, let's go," he says, breathing through his mouth, the smell of vomit and alcohol on Jack's breath. 

"No hospital," Jack mumbles.

They crawl across the parking lot, so slow that Kent, half-crazy, thinks that he could just leave Jack and they could come back with a stretcher. No. That's not a good idea. The bowl of vomit jostles, and Kent is sure some of it splashes on his pants. 

They make it to the door, and Kent nearly throws him into a chair. He speed walks to the desk.

"My boyfriend is vomiting blood," he says, and thrusts the bowl of vomit at her. She wrinkles her nose. 

"Where is your…partner?"

"He's over here," Kent says, and leads her to the chair. Jack is crying again, and Kent wipes the tears from his face with a discreet palm. 

"Don't make me go, Kenny."

"You're good, babe," he says quietly, smoothing the hair back from his face. "Can I see your phone?"

Jack tries to fish it out and can't control his fingers. Kent brushes his hand away and finds it in his pocket. 

"Kent, I'm… I'm scared. I don't wanna—-"

"You gotta," Kent says with what he hopes is finality, and pockets his phone as they wheel Jack away.

 

vi.

Jack wakes up to a sore throat. It's not that rare for him, that scratchy, post-vomit feeling after a Saturday night, and he rolls over, expecting to see Parse to his left, one arm slung over his eyes and that grumpy pout on his face that doesn't wipe off until noon. 

This is not the bathroom he stumbled into last night. 

It wasn't this clean. It didn't smell like bleach. Most importantly, it had neither a bedpan nor his mom.

"Maman?"

Her head is tipped back, and upon closer examination, he realizes she's snoring softly in a chair by the head of his bed. She's also close enough to touch, and he places two fingers on her knee, still unsure of where he is or why.

Her eyes fly open, and she jumps, "jesus _fuck_ " slipping from her lips before she can stop it. Slowly finding her bearings, she relaxes, and peers down at him. 

"Quest-ce qui passe?" he asks, his voice catching on whatever's happened to his throat. 

She purses her lips. "Tu ne le souviens?" she asks in botched French.

"Quoi?" 

"You're in the hospital, Jack," she says, dropping the French with an unspoken _fuck it._ "You had to have your stomach pumped last night."

"I—what?" His stomach drops. She's going to know he's been… getting creative with his dosage. That he's been mixing it with whatever will fuck him up the most. 

"The doctor said you had three times your dosage in your system. Mixed with vodka and Red Bull. Both of which can kill you already, mind you, but you put Zoloft on top of it." She looks down at the eReader she must have fallen asleep reading. "They pumped your stomach and put you on lockdown."

"Maman—"

"My turn to talk, your turn to listen," she says, tuning him out. "He said it looked like you'd been abusing them for a while. There was a lot in your system." Her voice sounds wrecked.

He doesn't say anything. 

"I left our dinner party with the Gilberts at eleven-thirty when I got the call. I drove all night to get here. And I want an explanation."

"Does Dad know?" Jack asks, trying to dodge the explanation. 

"Does Da-" she cuts herself off. "Your father knows, Jack. I didn't take off on a seven-hour _odyssey_ without telling him." 

"And?" He's in for it, he knows; it pisses her off to no end when he does this. 

"He's as scared as I am. He's angry at himself for not noticing things had gotten this bad, _like I am,_ and he's so angry at you for what you've done to yourself, _just like me."_

Jack slumps even further into his hospital bed, unable to lie his way out of this one. His stomach pumped, Jesus. He doesn't know how long that recovery period is. 

"Jack," she reins herself in. "Baby. We're not angry at you for partying." She pauses. "Well, I'm not. That's not the problem. We're angry and sad that you didn't think to tell us it had gotten this bad." 

"Mom, it's not—"

"It _is_ ," she says, and she smooths his hair back from his suddenly-sweaty forehead. "You need some time off. This isn't the way you deal with tough stuff. You can't just block the whole world out to avoid thinking."

He shakes his head vigorously. "No, Maman, I can handle it, _calisse_ , it was one mistake. Please, no."

"Love, I'm _sorry_ , but—"

His heart rate picks up just as his breathing gets faster, his back beginning to ache with the strain of it. His brain cuts off other than delivering whatever mantra it is that he's repeating ( _pleasei'msorrypleasei'msorrypleasei'msorry_ ) this time. His eyes are wild, he can see from his reflection in the TV, as he rocks back and forth. The sobs are punched out as he rocks, begging his mother to get him a pill, an oxygen mask, a knife so he can cut out all the bad. _Please_ , he begs her. _Please._

 

 

vii.

The woman who walks into the ER waiting room couldn't be anybody but Jack's mom, Kent thinks. He's met Jack's mom, as best friends do, but even if he hadn't, the resemblance is unmistakable. The mannerisms are too similar, her eyes way too blue and closed-off, for her to be anyone else. She was a runway model, Kent remembers, from some conversation probably on a roadie after lights-out, but she has the same awkward way of walking when she's upset, a lumber like her thoughts are literally weighing her down and she doesn't want anyone to see. 

She comes closer towards him. He stands up, and realizes she's taller than him by an inch.

"Kent." 

"Yeah?" he asks, trying to blink his exhaustion away. "Is Zimms—"

"Kent, this is four hundred dollars." She counts out the bill in fifties. "I want you to take a cab or a bus or whatever you need to get home. When your billet family asks where you were, I want you to give them the usual story you give them when you've gone out. Please take the opportunity to buy yourself something nice. 

"If you could possibly hold your tongue about Jack in front of your teammates," she takes a deep breath. "I think he'd be very uncomfortable if this got out."

"Is he okay?" Kent asks, panic climbing up his spine. "Last night, I mean—"

"Thank you for calling me, Kent," she says in a very closed-off way. "That was very responsible." She tries to hand him the money. He shakes his head.

"Mrs. Zimmerman, _please_. I just need to know—"

"Kent, honey." She looks down at him blearily. 

"I'm sorry," he says, because she looks sadder than anything else, and her eyes look just like Jack's, and he hates seeing Jack sad. "I should have watched out for him before he got that fu—messed up."

"Please just take the money," she whispers. "Take the money and keep your mouth shut."

"Okay," he says. "Can you tell Zimms I said, uh, take it easy?"

"Sure, honey," she says tiredly. She turns away from him, and he's left with four hundred dollars and his heart in his pocket. 

 

Kent calls his mom.

"Mama," Kent says, and his voice breaks immediately.

"Kent, what the fuck?" she snaps. "You were supposed to be home seven hours ago, at your father's. Where the hell are you?"

Her voice crackles even on the phone. 

"Mama, Jack is in the hospital," he says, and he's sobbing now. "He was throwing up blood."

"What?" she says, and he can see her placing one hand over her left eye like a compress, the way she always does when she's stressed.

"He c-called me last night from Chad Harding's party, and he said his stomach was b-burning. He mixed like everything. And I drove him to the hospital."

"Baby, what hospital?"

"Toronto."

"Are you still there?"

"Yeah."

"Do the Zimmermanns know?"

"Yeah, I called his mom," and then he dissolves into nonsense.

"Okay," she soothes. "Honey, where are you specifically?"

"The ER waiting room at the…" He squints at the sign on the desk. "General Hospital."

"I'll be there, baby. Hang tight."

His mom opens her arms immediately when she gets there, and he stumbles towards her, burying his face in her neck even if it means he has to bend down.

"Oh, honey," she murmurs, rubbing his back. "Do you know if he's okay?"

Kent doesn't know, is the main thing. All he has is his four hundred dollars. He shakes his head.

"Let's get you home," she says bracingly. "Get some food in you."

He clings to her, arm wrapped around her shoulder like he'd carried Jack, as she drags him towards the Volvo. When she's deposited him in the front seat and given him a napkin to blow his nose with, he realizes he has to tell her. There's no way he can explain Zimms' motivation without totally giving up what he did. It comes as more of a relief than he'd thought it would.

"I'm, uh," he says when she's put her key in the ignition. "We're dating. Jack and I."

She gives him a sidelong glance. "I know."

"You did not," he says, petulant. 

"There are some things a mom just knows, Kent."

"We were, like, super careful. He was in my phone as 'Sara from Bio' and his contact was just generic conversations we texted every once in a while. There's no way you knew."

"Okay," his mom says, rolling her eyes. "I'm so shocked! You sneaky, sneaky boys."

He frowns at her. 

"You're dating Jack…" she prompts him.

"He was taking, like, five pills a hit. He was really starting to scare me. And then we had a fight over something really dumb, and I said some really mean things, and he called me five days later, totally bombed, and he was crying and saying he was sorry."

He's shaking, he realizes. "And I got him in my car and he started puking blood. I didn't know what to do, so I took him to the hospital and he kept saying he didn't want to go, but I had to. I had to."

His mom soothes him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, still idling in the parking ramp.

"Oh, honey," she says, rubbing his back. "Oh, babe."

 

viii.

Jack's barely spoken to his mom since he's been checked out of the hospital. They sit in her car, his seat scooted up all the way and his head on the dash. 

"Jack," she says, her voice quiet. "Jack, can you listen to me?"

She's driving, badly, swearing and weaving through traffic. 

He turns his head to her noncommittally.

"We've found a therapist for you, back at home. Dr. Vizzini. She specializes in teens."

"I'm not going home," he says. 

"Oh, but you are," she tells him. 

"We have a game in _three days_ ," Jack snaps. "I can't just take time off because it's easier for you."

"Easier for _me_?!" she yells, really yells. She pulls in front of a Ford Escape into the far right lane and then over to the side of the road. She stops the car and puts it into park. "You think any of this is fucking _easy_ , Jack? Jesus _Christ,_ you overdosed on anti-depressants and vodka like a soccer mom! If Kent hadn't picked you up from that party that you'd be dead, Jack. You threw up your own stomach lining!"

"Parse picked me up?" Jack asks, the pieces fitting together in his mind.

"You see, Jack, you don't even remember! You can't just pretend like everything is fine. Your father and I can't pretend like everything is fine!"

"Parse called the ambulance?" Jack asks, gritting his teeth.

"No, Jack, he _drove_ you here, and he called me to come get you."

Jack turns away from her.

He uses a landline to call Parse when he gets home, dodging his father. 

"You little fucking weasel," he says before Parse can say hello. "You couldn't just mind your own business."

"Jack—what?" Parse's voice rises in pitch. 

"I'm being thrown into rehab," Jack growls. "You had to stick your ass where it didn't belong."

"Jack, what the fuck, do you even know what happened to you?"

" _Rehab_ ," Jack says. "Not the fucking draft, Kent. Rehab."

"Zimms, I don't know why you're so fucking angry I didn't let you OD in Hammer's bathroom, but maybe that's for the better."

"What the fuck do you know?" Jack snaps. "You fucking sold me out."

"You threw up blood in the front seat of my car, Jack."

"It was none of your fucking business."

" _You_ called _me_ , Jack," Kent says. "Having an attack, at nine at night, already bombed." 

"I don't remember any of that," Jack says, righteous anger deflating a little. 

"Well it happened," Kent says, and his voice cracks. Jack feels like shit now that he can't be angry at him. "You couldn't even stand, Jack, I was _scared_."

"I'm sorry," Jack says dumbly. 

"You'd been taking too much for a while, hadn't you," Kent says, a statement, not a question. 

"Yeah," Jack admits, drained of any anger. 

"How many?"

"Maybe three times a day. Five at a pop, towards the end."

Kent does the cute thing where he blows air out of his cheeks. "God, Jack."

There's a pause.

"You were high the day we almost—" Kent starts, then stops, like he might not like the answer.

"Yeah," he winces. Kent doesn't say anything. 

"I'm sorry," Jack says.

"Well, that's real nice to hear, Jack," Parse says. "Unfortunately, you're a drug addict."

"You can't just not try, Parse," he insists, trying to keep the last pillar of his life standing up. 

"Blow it up your ass, Zimmermann," Kent says, his voice hoarse. "I'm in love with you."

 

Parse hangs up.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
